House of Lords
New World - New Eyes

House of Lords have released albums for over three decades now, we here at Hallowed have written about two of them, and this is the third one - we have been positive to all of them. The previous album from 2017 I thought sounded somewhat tired but still great, like they had reached the end of the line for that line of song writing. I noticed when gathering videos for this review that there were some negative comments about the band having evolved their sound, people who thought they should return to older sound and stuff like that. I think that is a positive in general as bands that does the same for thirty years deserves to be banished to oblivion rather than be celebrated. I’d rather see bands that I like evolve in a direction I don’t like than keep doing the same album over and over because that is even worse – there are way too many bands that tries to remain the same even though they themselves evolve as people and the end result is a stale and boring discography of sad an cowardly releases that are just weaker copies of their predecessors.

Fortunately, House of Lords doesn’t seem to be one of those bands, all the albums I have reviewed by them have sounded fairly differently and you see a progression through them. With the first one being more uptempo and simpler, the previous was somewhat tired but still good. This time James Christian has worked together with Mark Spiro and infused new life into the band’s sound, creating a more vital album with more dynamic sound than what we heard on the previous album. It is still arena rock like the previous albums and it will still have the familiar sound with Christian’s vocals and many other elements that the band has established over the years, it is not like they have evolved into a different band but enough for this album to feel quite fresh. The production is really strong, and the songs show good variation and depth, the playing time is quite sensible as well.

This is probably the finest House of Lords album I have reviewed; the tracks are really strong all the way through and it sounds fresh. It is difficult to find things to be negative about, but I think they could have used a pacier opening track as the title track doesn’t seem right to draw the listener to the album. It is a great track but perhaps not the best opener. Otherwise I really like this and enjoys playing through the album over and over thinking about those negative comments (they were not that many but you tend to notice such things more) and thinking that those commenters don’t understand anything, fortunately the band realises that it would be crazy to sound the same now as they did thirty years ago – look at the world now and then and tell me why a band should sound the same when the world doesn’t look the same, things evolve.

House of Lords may not set the world alight with their originality but at least they sound fresh and personal and seem to manage something quite fresh and especially really good when releasing a new album. It was a good idea to collaborate with Mark Spiro for this one, it brought life to their sound, and perhaps they should collaborate with a different artist and songwriter next time in order to keep evolving and make great albums. I conclude that New World – New Eyes is a very strong album; you should check it out.

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